Sean Gerrity, president of the American Prairie Reserve, has been working for more than a decade to turn a 5,000-square-mile swath of Montana prairie into an American Serengeti of rolling grasslands teeming with 
bison, wolves, elk, and bighorn sheep. Using a combination of private, federal, and state lands, Gerrity’s goal is to recreate a northern Great Plains ecosystem like the one that existed two centuries ago. “I want to restart the golden age of conservation,” says Gerrity, whose organization has so far assembled 250 genetically pure bison on about 60,000 acres of land. But the Montana native and former Silicon Valley entrepreneur faces a major challenge persuading skeptical ranchers and farmers that bison and wolves roaming in their backyard is a good thing. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Gerrity discusses his vision, the future of large-scale conservation in the U.S., and the rationale for restoring part of the prairie to a Lewis-and-Clark incarnation.
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Read the interview